skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
You (and thirdsum), as well as most others, make the other big mistake and looks at what the artist makes. Which is kind of irrelevant. Look at what the record label is making from spotify streaming.

Also I don't get your BBC-comparison, did BBC broadcast it to one person?

Spotify can hardly be blamed for the artist having a crappy deal with his/her record label.

And the reason for why it is sooo bad is of course because it hasn't matured yet. But the only problem in the equation is the record labels.

The reason for why I didn't buy albums was because I didn't enjoy listening to albums. I enjoy listening to tracks and I don't feel like buying twenty when I only like two of them.

It doesn't help that buying an album and having it in my shelf "says something about who I am" when I really didn't want the album to begin with.

Not to mention how inconvenient a pressed CD is for someone like me.
The problem with this article is that in the very second sentence, the author switches from discussing bitcoins themselves to discussing the bitcoin monetary system as a whole. Of course the whole system has intrinsic value, but that is a separate issue from whether or not the currency itself has intrinsic value. In fact, it is generally necessary for a non-commodity currency not to have significant intrinsic value.
I don't know if I would call the package management system of debian esoteric in a conversation comparing distros. I will agree that the wording was a bad choice.
BarackObama.com Source Code
Many years ago when I thought I was going to go into patent law (egads) I ended up taking the Fundamentals of Engineering exam and passing it as an Engineer-In-Training. Does this mean I can do four years of software engineering and then certify as a PE?
Love it.

It really is a simple, elegant way to handle pow - I would pay for this happily.

Put up a donate link via Stripe and I will :)
I wouldn't be surprised if state government and possibly federal government programming jobs required it for all but entry level jobs as they currently do with things like civil engineers.
>> " I save a good $1000/month from switching from .NET on dedicateds to NodeJS on a PaaS (Heroku)"

I'm really puzzled by this. A single dedicated large .NET box (16GB RAM and 6 Core Processor, 1TB raid, etc.) runs $150 a month. When I was looking at PaaS, Heroku came in more than five times that much for similar capability. $1,000 a month gets me SIX of these dedicated boxes that can be tied together as needed.

Why was your setup so much more for dedicated that you could _save_ that much, much less why you would be spending that much in the first place?
No! No, no, no, no, no. The best programmers use whatever they use. You are making the same mistake as the guy you're replying to. There is no one best way. We need to get over this mentality as a community. I don't mean to pick on you, as this was clearly just an off-the-cuff comment, but this kind of dialogue is simply worthless. I agree that the grandparent poster seems pretty clueless about vim and its ilk, but an equal and opposite reaction that's just as subjective and baseless will get us nowhere.
The next period of history could be defined as the post nation-state era, and of all the supranational technologies and institutions that will make this so, bitcoin could be the most important.

I'm talking about the ability of governments to restrict the activity of citizens and also to fund themselves from said activity.
In college in the early 90's, suddenly a 40 year old mustached guy started showing up to dorm keg parties.

He wore leather jackets, was overly eager to ask for everyone's phone number, and said things like "lets put on some twisted sister and smoke dope".

This continued for a few weeks, then suddenly he disappeared never to be seen again. Coincidentally, at the same time, one of the local dorm weedheads was busted for intent to distribute (even though in his defense he only liked smoking and only sold to this guy because he begged so much).

So, yes. These guys are so easy to spot its incredible. They are meatheads in most cases.
I really like the simple UI to this. Great work! Just curious what the future plans of this project are. Any plans of open sourcing it?
Vending machine is a bad idea because it destigmatizes requesting equipment.

If you knew you could just go to a vending machine and get equipment, what would stop you from just requesting extra for your personal use? Since any new equipment comes out of my personal returns, I don't get a new keyboard just because the keyboard doesnt feel like it did out of the box -- I clean it.

If you knew that you could request a new keyboard every time you spilled coffee on your keyboard, what would keep you from carelessly placing drinks on your desk? I know that my desk was paid for with my money, so I'm very careful with regards to stuff like coasters and tall cups.

If you have to look a person in the face, you feel a greater sense of accountability (as if that person knows you requested it) and you will be less likely to frivolously request stuff.
Btw. Making it to #1 on HN is huge! So humbled. Not worthy! Thanks for reading. I truly hope my mistakes and lessons leaned help other entrepreneurs get a leg up.

Smile, you're designed to.

Jason
Great comments above. One more thing to add: if I was in your position I would be thinking more broadly about how to best use my math background within the software development world. You're worth a lot as a programmer. You're worth even more as a programmer with a PhD in math, providing you can find the right opportunity to apply your skills. You may not notice a big difference in starting salary if you don't have a lot of experience, but if you choose the right path you can likely make much, much more in a 5-10 year time frame. In my current company, we have some minor issues finding good programmers. We have major problems finding programmers that are really good at developing the fundamentals of an approach for solving really hard business problems (hard from an algorithmic perspective).

It may be that your thesis topic is far removed from practical applications, but you likely have a strong enough foundation in math that you would be great at working on a lot domain specific applications. Some others mentioned machine learning, and this is likely a good option, but only one of many. Spin this around and think of it from the business side. Where are there opportunities to put more robust analytical solutions in place in the business world? Start thinking about every company you see, buy products from, or otherwise interact with - how could they (or are they) be more effective at what they do with better math? Everything from better sales forecasting at your local supermarket, to better car design.
Google Patents Smart Watch Augmented Reality Viewer
So if design is right/wrong, why is the 2nd iphone screenshot labelled 'better' rather than 'correct'?
This advice is spectacularly good. As someone with a bit of experience I found myself either nodding along or shouting "yes!" while reading some of the points. And some were new to me — I intend to spend time to understand them and think about how to use your advice.

Thanks!
Spotify isn't just competing with iTunes, they're competing with piracy. And while $10 a month is nothing compared to maintaining a comprable iTunes collection, it's a lot compared to free.

I think $10 is the sweet spot. I used to be a fairly big music pirate (what.cd elite, if that means anything to anybody), and RDIO at $10/month has completely replaced my whole illegal music collection. If it were more than that, i'd probably start thinking about whether it was worth the money or not, but at $10/mo i don't even think about it.
Crash Server
This is coming very soon. Scott Guthrie mentioned a few time frames in his recent blog post on Windows Azure Web Sites. http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2012/09/17/announcing...
Do you think it would have a significant impact in the private sector though?
Looks like "How to do Waterfall" (62.5% of the test) with additional coverage of Security (15%), QA (7.5%), and Engineering process (7.5%), and Configuration Maintenance (7.5%). There are 80 multiple-choice questions spread across 2 sessions (4 hours each). Open book.

An overview of the exam: http://ncees.org/Documents/Public/Exam%20specifications/PE%2...

Not something I'd feel inclined to get unless this somehow became an industry requirement- which is unlikely - Agile and progressive Software Dev shops are probably throwing up a little bit in their mouths at this thing. Replace Agile with "Extreme Programming" and you've got something that looks like it came straight out of the 90s.
How is bitcoin a non-commodity currency? If bitcoins have value because they allow you to do things you couldn't otherwise do (my point), it's a commodity.

why is it desirable for a currency to be a non-commodity currency?
If You Can't Explain What You Do In a Paragraph, You've Got A Problem
Back in July: http://www.logodesignlove.com/obama-source-code-logo
The HN submission: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4322002
I would pay up to £50 for that service. And if they charged £100 or even £1000 (per month) for that service, I wouldn't consider it unreasonable I'd just curse my luck fir being too poor.
I think it might augment the private sector in that anyone with a licence is probably worth interviewing. I can't see it being required (not in this market) but I can see it being valued.
Looks like it should be possible: http://pow.cx/manual.html#section_2.1.4
It's not clear from the page but this article was originally written in May 2011.
Interesting - now it spells 'usa'
I'm fairly knowledgeable about computer security and slightly to somewhat about power distribution, and for a well-resourced hacker ($10-50mm), shutting down the US power grid actually wouldn't be terribly difficult.

Leaving aside any attacks on the control system, the actual physical infrastructure is quite vulnerable. It operates close to breakdown on many days anyway, so it would just take the loss of some critical lines and maybe substations to cause (if lucky) widespread controlled blackouts and load shedding, or if unlucky, uncontrolled massive blackouts.

Since 9/11 they've fortified certain pieces (in the late 1990s, a 3 guys with crowbars and pistols could have broken into major grid operations centers and shut them down), but a lot of it is still fairly vulnerable.
Very nice! What's the best way to develop and debug mobile sites locally? Is there a quick way to force either my browser or VS to go into 'mobile' mode?

Edit - Found the answer :)
http://www.howtogeek.com/113439/how-to-change-your-browsers-...
Missing entry:

6-8 weeks ==> Never

If you're lucky, the programmer is Jeff Atwood (but it will still take a year.)

More likely, the task will never be finished, unless management intervenes by splitting it into smaller tasks.

At that scale, you're probably overlooking whole features (as in, feature A depends on feature B.) And feature B may be something you will need a specialist for, like fraud prevention or database replication.
I understand regarding "programmers", but how about computer scientists?
$5/month? That's hilariously off by two to three orders of magnitude for some buyers.
Collusion - The Home Stretch
This was on hacker news last year
CharmingScript and the Elegance Oriented Programming Paradigm
Some earlier versions of mankind had great knowledge too and not all of that has been preserved for us. Try to rebuild the Pyramids of Gizeh today for example. Do we today know exactly how this stuff worked?
Aah..the "Apple can do no wrong" kind of attitude. The article is perfect, and your fourth point is plain BS, because you categorize profits. Profits are profits dude. You can't dismiss saying this profit isn't that type of profit..etc. Profits = money. And apple rapes developers. EOS.
Still Not Enough iPhone 5s to Go Around
> what's missing is an industry device standard a la IBM PC

I fear that. Before the IBM PC clones the personal computer market was fragmented, but evolution was very fast. In the mid-80's, we had computers and capabilities x86 PCs would only gain in the mid-90's (for instance, plug-and-play expansion slots were present in the Apple II). Amigas had preemptive multitasking and Ataris pushed the price of 32 bit computing to impressive lows. Acorn introduced a RISC-based PC whose processor now powers just about everything that needs to process information around you.

Today, most personal computers are descendants of the IBM PC and employ an extended version of its horrid instruction set (the x86 was Intel's plan-B at the time - i432 was plan-A) running a matrioska of computers with something similar to an IBM 5150 at the core. The three major OSs in use on PCs are derived from 60's technologies, two from Unix, one from VMS. We deserve more.
Looks like my improv classes might pay off :)
Critics and artists are obsessed with remix culture.
Really? Just because its structured like waterfall doesn't mean its "how to do waterfall". I read the req spec and there isn't a thing on here that isn't valuable information for every engineer no matter what process they use.

Read what it actually covers and the topics they test and tell me there's something on there that is completely useless.
I think ntkachov is probably right and that this will augment hiring practices by some companies as a key indicator for HR to bring someone in for an interview. There could also be a trend for companies working on critical infrastructure (power, water, transportation, etc), government contracts (Boeing, Lockheed Martin and hundreds of others) to start requiring you to have a PE to work on critical or real time systems.

I don't think the majority of companies hiring programmers will care at all about a PE or even require it. For most programming jobs the varied level of knowledge required to complete the exam probably isn't necessary.
statements like this are exactly the reason why people have zero sympathy for the music (and movie) industries. In the real world, products are worth as much as people are willing to pay for them, not whatever the hell you want to charge. Spotify isn't cheating you out of anything. You are getting paid what the market has deemed your content is worth. If you don't like it, take your songs off spotify.
As a "geek", it will probably drive you crazy to not have ICS. As a regular phone user, Gingerbread will do everything you need it to, and you probably wouldn't even notice it isn't the latest and greatest.
This article can be summarized as follows:

Programmers tend to underestimate tasks.

Software estimation is an extremely complicated topic, this post barely scratches the surface.
The book actually discusses the problems with running C code on stack machines. To sum up, yes- you absolutely can run C code on a stack machine, but you lose most of the advantages of the architecture. Stack machines make procedure calls very inexpensive and encourage the use of very short procedures with a small number of variables in scope at a given time. The stack operators that are available provide quick access to a few elements at the top of the stacks at the expense of random access to elements that are deeper. Stack-oriented languages like Forth make the programmer aware of this and encourage breaking tasks down in this manner. Idiomatic C has procedures which are at least an order of magnitude longer and have many more values in scope at a given time. This provides a compiler with a fairly uncomfortable and difficult optimization task.

Speaking as someone who works with compilers and really likes stack machines, I don't think they will provide much practical value unless programmers are willing to adapt their languages and their approach to programming to the strengths and weaknesses of the paradigm.
So this just makes it official, right? Or does this affect people currently employed as Software Engineers?
thanks! date added to template!
Really? Does it have Siri? Does it have FaceTime? Does it have turn-by-turn navigation (the one added feature of the Apple Maps catastrophe)? Is notification Center the only substantial feature added since iOS4? Can the iOS6 running on the 3GS really be considered the same as the iOS6 running on e.g. the iPhone 4S? Or is it iOS4 with a few extra APIs for developers?

I mean, Google releases updates to the Google Apps on Android for quite a substantial amount of time, so it's quite possible that unupdated Android devices are actually getting almost the same level of support as the 3GS. The only difference is that app developers have to bundle the [new APIs](http://developer.android.com/tools/extras/support-library.ht...) with their Android apps while Apple pushes the new API onto devices.
> it's a "blame the victim" justification.

I've always been a strong supporter of blaming the victim, precisely because "blaming the victim" is such a popular code phrase which acts to short circuit the process of logical reasoning and leads to a systemic under-blaming of alleged victims even where their alleged victimization is attributable primarily to their own actions.

If there are known strategies to avoid being victimized and particular victims consciously or incompetently forgo them, and the predictable consequence follows, are we really supposed to feel sympathy for those whose own decisions put them where they are?

This goes triple when the alleged "victims" are multibillion dollar international corporations. No industry with enough money and power to buy their own laws can legitimately feel victimized when non-Congressperson-owning individuals violate the laws that they bought.
I read the multi-paragraph post and still don't see why more than one paragraph is a problem.

Being super-concise while not omitting key details is hard, while not providing much real value.
Mars Mapped With Open Source Tools From MapBox
Responsible disclosure is a myth.

There is no such thing as irresponsible disclosure, therefore there can be no such thing as responsible disclosure.
Fortunately, you don't give App.net your credit card information directly. It's handled by Stripe, and they're past being "10 minutes old". (Even though this isn't easily verifiable in the checkout flow to a non-developer.)
Ask HN: What programming language should I master?
Hello HN -
Please keep in mind that I am not asking which programming language I should learn per se (I know the basics.. and I mean basics.. of several).

However, I do really want to specialize/attempt to master a smaller subset of programming languages that would be the most useful overall.

Which do you recommend I focus on? As you know, time is a finite resource and, as much as I would love to spend hours learning new languages, necessity dictates that I focus on a smaller subset of languages.

With that said, could you offer some recommendations as to the best language(s) to concentrate on in terms of:
- Being able to get a job in said language.
- Overall outlook for the language (Will it be around in 10 years?).
- Your experience with having used the language? What did you like or dislike?

Thank you.
The UK experienced chaos when a small group of farmers and lorry drivers blocked oil refineries.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_protests_in_the_United_Kin...)

Some aspects of security are purely reactive (One man with a shoe bomb? All passengers now remove their shoes. One man with an underwear bomb? All passengers now go through millimetre wave scanners) and so this vulnerability has been fixed. Other protests were much less successful.
The purpose of "responsible disclosure" is to prevent subtle vulnerabilities from being known by more people.

For a vulnerability as obvious as this, it's a fair bet that bad guys will notice immediately. "Responsible disclosure" is great when you've discovered something tricky, but it's irresponsible when anyone else can notice as easily as you can.

Remember that the term "responsible" is about responsibility to the users, not to the developers. If publicizing a vulnerability would leak it to bad guys who don't have it, the responsible thing to do is not to leak it. If the bad guys already have it, the responsible thing to do is to tell the public. (After all, disclosure is about whether to tell the public, not whether to tell the developers.)
> Seriously, this deserves to be a book with 90 3-page chapters.

I see what you did there. (PS: I love that book as well.)
How 'Human Flesh Search' Is Changing China
This wasn't some exotic exploit either. Public, numbered (1,2,3...) accounts, all of them editable - it's almost funny. Can you imagine what other security problems exist in the code.
Web-mode : emacs major-mode for editing web templates
Oh come on! I am in mid-forties and not just did not have any problems getting interviews, but also did not have any problems switching jobs a few months ago. Where I work we can't find enough decent devs for any money. H1-B is just a memory at that point. Mind you, this is not Silicon Valley, the market is quite a bit smaller (north Denver metro).

Someone is either feeding you bad information or you are extrapolating and imagining things.

Where I work, we have a very good team of developers and being mid 40-ies I am right in the middle of the pack.

BTW, having been on H1-B 10 years ago, I can tell you that "40-50%" is not true either.

So, what the heck are you talking about?
a bit late but this is the link where i read it

http://codemonkeyism.com/clojure-scala-part-2/

looked trust worthy to me!
You're probably also overestimating the barrier for what's worth showing, but yeah, that webapp sounds awesome.
No, the problem is the record labels. They are the ones that hinder artist revenue from services such as spotify.

I don't consider pirating and yes, if spotify (and all similar services) were shut down and I were forced to buy albums on CDs the artists would get much less money from me.

Also remember that the day I end my spotify subscription I have nothing to show for it. I've spend many hundreds of dollars on spotify and the day I stop paying I will not have a single track to show for it.

How many people actually constantly buys music every month? A monthly spotify subscription isn't much per month but it adds up.
I've been working on a DIY Arduino based system for the past year or so. There are a ton of great links out there from people who have done projects with varying degrees of difficulty. What do you want to automate first? Do you have any microcontroller experience?
4,000 Foxconn workers on strike over iPhone 5 quality control measures
You've never heard of a developer who made a mil in a liquidity event? This is Hacker News dude.
5 Must Watch Movies For Entrepreneurs
IFTTT Has Stopped Supporting Posterous Channels
I guess a more direct question would be how and if this will help a self-taught developer be more competitive. I'm self-taught. I've been studying and "practicing" programming since I was a kid but I never finished a BSCS and I often feel that hurts me. So recently I re-enrolled in school but I'm a long ways away from finishing and want to continue building iOS apps while going to school. This seems like it could be a quicker road to establishing credibility (other than experience) before earning my degree. Thoughts?
If money is your primary motivation for any long term choices, you are doing something wrong.
AFAIK dns queryies can be made to go using proxy (I think its Socks v5 that enables this). I'm using ssh -D and socks v5 setting in my firefox when I need to see website that are blocked by very prohibitive proxy.

Why would flash programs bypass proxy? At my work they wouldn't be able to connect it they weren't using proxy.
> "Will it be necessary to study up and get licensed to remain competitive?"

Only if you intend to work for code sweatshops and "consultancies" that value credentialing above track record/experience.

In other words, if you're stuck at the bottom of the programming jobs barrel, it may behoove you to get this. For those of us lucky enough to avoid that fate, we'll spend more time laughing at it than studying it.